


Mute Swan

by twitchtipthegnawer



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Sentinels & Guides, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Domestic Violence, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Terrorism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-24
Updated: 2018-06-18
Packaged: 2019-05-13 03:54:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14741525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twitchtipthegnawer/pseuds/twitchtipthegnawer
Summary: While the top normal weight for a male swan is roughly thirty-three pounds, one unusually big swan weighed almost fifty-one, and this counts as the largest weight ever verified for a flying bird.It has since been questioned whether this male could still take flight.





	1. Guardians and Emissaries

Eve Kendrick had her son on a sunny day in late June, with birdsong and heat pouring in through the hospital window and her husband conspicuously missing. The nurse who sat at her bedside in his place gave her curious looks as she cried and cried, and yet her hand refused to tighten. Afterwards, she was told that nurses and husbands alike had had fingers broken in the past. She didn’t leave a bruise.

Joshua was born squalling and red-faced and wrinkly, and Eve had instantly known he was special. She liked to think that this was a different sort of knowledge from what most mothers claimed. She didn’t delude herself into believing he was unique, the best of the best or first of his kind.

She just knew he was going to be _important._ It was that simple.

It seemed, the day she took him home, that she was right. Because there was her husband, vodka in hand, and he looked at Joshua with disgust in his eyes.

“He better not make too much noise,” Bill Kendrick warned.

“Please,” Eve breathed, holding him close. “You wouldn’t hurt him, would you?”

“It ain’t his fault he’s got an ugly mug, is it? That’s _yours.”_

And then there had been a pause, Bill stalking closer until he loomed over Eve. Emissaries were frequently slight and short, and guardians so often _big_. She had always regretted that.

“Cute though, innit? In a pug kinda way.”

Frozen, it was all Eve could do not to gape. Because Bill hadn’t approved of anything she’d done or made, ever.

So, she was right. _Josh was special._

He grew up small and angelic, round cheeks and bouncy curls the ringlets of Eve's hair and the chocolate of Bill’s. His eyes, though, those were _all_ hers, a hazel that invited you to stare just a moment longer, if only to puzzle out their exact hue.

His teachers loved him, even when he didn’t show signs of being gifted in preschool or kindergarten. He had a small army of little classmates who followed him near worshipfully. Eve had no idea where he got his charisma, since neither of his parents had it.

Most importantly, however, Bill never hurt him. Bill never even hurt _Eve_ in front of him, which made him more precious than Eve could say.

She didn’t make much money, not as a pharmacy tech, but it was enough to save up. Both she and Bill were working, after all, and as much as Bill spent on booze he still covered their living requirements on his own. Factory jobs always paid well. Point being, she saved up, and she looked at their small midwestern suburb and dreamed of a place as warm as the day Josh had been born. He deserved the present, after all. He was special.

They went to Disney World together, left Bill behind when he declared it a waste of money and time. Josh looked around at the place with star-struck eyes, demanding to meet Gaston before they did anything else. The joy shining through his five-year-old face was worth any price Eve could think of.

Any price but _this._

In a single moment he had disappeared. His hand slipped from hers, and he was carried away by a tide of humanity too thick for her to see through.

Heart stilled in her chest, Eve searched frantically, about to get on her hands and knees to see if he’d ducked under a bench or something when -

Two things too fast for her mind to keep up: her head snapped to the side, against her will; a woman cried out, bending in half as though she’d been gutted. Eve's eyes widened. The woman came back up. A child was cradled in her arms, crying and crying and _crying._

There was a moment of movement that Eve would never remember, not for the rest of her life, though she thought back on this moment often. One second she was watching from what felt like so far away, and the next a relieved stranger was passing her child into her arms. He clung to her, sobs dying down rapidly as he gave her a tearful smile.

He was special, she knew. But her hands shook as she looked down at him, and knowledge crept in at the edges of her mind.

No, it was impossible. He was a special child, but it was only his sweet face and disposition which had made the stranger so eager to help him. Only that. Nothing more.

_Nothing more._

The world had never been so kind to her. Distantly, she knew that it wouldn’t be kind to her son for forever. But she put off the thoughts, and put them off, knowing they would come back to hurt her someday and hating them.

Josh broke his leg the winter of first grade. Eve would’ve been heartbroken, no matter what else had come with the injury.

Plenty of children slipped walking up the driveway from the bus, though. Plenty of children had hurt themselves against the midwestern winter’s ice and landed themselves with panicked parents and hospital visits.

Only one had caused his mother to fall _with_ him.

Watching from the kitchen window, stark snow-reflected light bleaching the color from his grey, puffy coat. And then suddenly she was on the linoleum floor, clutching her calf in a white-knuckled grip. She thought, for a moment, that Bill had come home and stabbed her, as he’d been threatening for years.

A long second of confusion stretched before she turned her thoughts inward, and suddenly her invisible wound made a terrible sort of sense.

As emissaries went, Eve wasn’t terribly strong. Slightly above average, at best. But she could force her shields up when needed, and god did she need them now. They were sloshing like water carried in a pitcher, shaky hands “no I don’t need help I can do this,” and she did. The murk of sand suspended in liquid dulled the sensation enough to get her into the driveway.

Though she rushed to carry him inside, terror lingered in her breast at the thought of someone seeing. “Baby,” she said, soft into the crown of his head. “Baby, can you hear me?”

Joshua sniffled, burrowed his nose into the soft of her blouse as he nodded. Her breath caught in her throat, but she forced the next words out. “Can you see anything, baby?”

“Clouds,” he said, and she felt her last hope disappear like an ancient kraken into the depths.

“Can you gather them closer?” She pressed fingertips to his temples, reached out with hands made of immense stretches of green water. “Hold your clouds tight, baby.”

And he did. Her good boy, so brave, and none of the paramedics suspected that the glazed look in his eyes was due to an intense lesson in empathy. _Shock,_ Eve could’ve laughed at the word. If anyone was in shock, it was her.

Every country in the UN used the same method to judge the strength of an emissary or guardian. The scale took several things into account, but the best indicator was the age at which one’s powers manifested; the age they went online.

If it happened between ten and twelve, the child was guaranteed to be extraordinarily powerful. It was generally considered a shame, but nothing could be done but to give the child to the Keeps for training. People that strong were _dangerous._ A guardian could sniff out your darkest secrets easy as breathing. An emissary could convince you into a heinous crime with a single look.

No one had ever come online younger than ten. _Never._ And since Joshua hadn’t had any of the signs, hadn’t been suddenly overwhelmed by the flood of emotion or confused by his mother’s empathy shields, there was only one possibility.

Going online at birth was something that belonged in fairy tales and myths. Not in Eve's living room, playing with his blocks and ignoring the cast on his foot.

She considered, for the first time since he’d been born, simply letting herself die.

_They can’t have him,_ she realized. It didn’t matter that a Keep would be a safe, if cold, place to grow up. It didn’t matter that she was being selfish.

_They can’t have him._

“Baby, come here,” she said. He crawled into her lap and was almost too big to fit, certainly not a baby anymore. But still far, far too young for what she’d need to teach him.

He nuzzled into her blouse, small and innocent, as she gave him the first lesson every emissary got. “Close your eyes for me, will you sweetheart?”

Together they shut out the rest of the world, first sight, and then sound and sensation, so even his warm weight in her arms was more a memory than a feeling. And then she opened her eyes, again, and she wasn’t a person at all - she was an _ocean._

High above her there sat a little cloud, white and fluffy as cotton balls, and she knew it was her boy. She knew it because, if she tilted her head, then there they were sitting together on the grey living room carpet, and she knew it because the cloud was the tinted pink and yellow of the sunset on the day he’d been born. Affection and comfort.

“What do you see?” She asked, just like she had two days ago. His answer was the same.

“Clouds,” he said. And then, “Our house. Water.”

Eve held her breath for a moment, felt it as the tides stilling under immense pressure. “Water?”

“Mhmm,” he said. “Like in Florida.” The gulf? “Smells like your cornbread.”

If Eve had been one to cry more easily, she would have then. Instead, she said, “I can bake some later if you want, baby. But right now we need to focus.”

She taught him to make constructs slowly, painstakingly, over the following months. He had an astonishing grasp on his surroundings while utilizing his empathy, knowing where people were and visualizing the world as it would be seen from a cloud high above. She’d never heard of anyone able to do that before.

But surroundings were supposed to come second to constructs, and he seemed frustrated when she told him he couldn’t use things from the “real” world to build a home on his cloud. “It has to be you, and only you,” she explained. “You can shape your cloud, can’t you baby? Focus on the texture, the way it holds together. You can change those things if you want. You can change anything you put your mind to.”

It wasn’t strictly speaking true, at least not for most emissaries. Eve's ocean was trapped as an ocean, expansive but only due to the way her own mind would scatter sometimes. It was full of brittle, fragile coral, and those sharp edges were some of the few things she could reliably make in her own mind. Most people’s minds had some shapes they bent into more easily than others. But she was certain her son was different. Was special.

Was _important._

Joshua was thirteen when the first of his classmates went online. Patrick... something, Eve couldn’t remember, she didn’t socialize with the other mothers. Their judgemental gazes made her stomach ache too terribly.

So Joshua was thirteen, and she mostly saw him after school and on the rare lunch break when she picked him up for McDonald’s. He’d stretched taller and lost much of his baby fat, not her baby at all anymore, but she still called him that and he never complained. She thought maybe he liked feeling small, and she liked that she could feel large, with him, in a way she never did otherwise.

Her boy was an amazing artist, pencil sketches on lined notebook paper detailing to her the way his castle on a cloud had developed over the years. And it was a _castle;_ moss-lined stone bricks and torches hanging from the walls. She loved it, admired the few drawings he was proud enough of to give to her. She was busy hanging one above his bed, something pleasant to look at when he was trying to sleep, when he came home that day.

With news about a certain new guardian.

He was shaking, and he _smelled,_ but before Eve noticed either of those things she noticed the lightning arcing up from her surface and towards clouds gone dark and heavy with rain.

Racing to the driveway as she hadn’t done since he’d broken his leg all those years ago, Eve hoped beyond hope that she was wrong. But she caught the wind whipping past him, almost summer, and why couldn’t this have waited just a bit longer to happen? He smelled like an _emissary,_ unmistakable, a scent which called out to guardians and begged them to come, to protect, to -

“What happened?” She felt the tremor in her voice even as she wrapped her arms protectively around his shoulders and pulled him close.

“I, uh, Mom,” Josh’s voice got thicker with tears, and she ushered him into the house. When they got in, however, she stopped him from sitting on the couch. He stared at her with confused, almost hurt eyes, but mostly he just looked lost. “It was Patrick,” he said at last.

“Did he do anything?” Eve knew what guardians could do, she would _kill_ that boy if she had to.

“No.” Josh’s voice slowly transitioned from shock to awe. “I stopped him.”

Eyes shining greener than usual beside the red of his scleras, Josh stared up at his mother and whispered again, “I stopped him.”

Calloused, thin-fingered hands shaking, Eve directed him to go up and shower. She washed both their clothes, on the off chance that Bill could catch the scent on her and realize that it was from their son. He was old enough now that finding out he was an emissary wouldn’t be a fatal error, but he’d be so _angry._ He hadn’t beaten her in months. She didn’t think she could take one of his old moods anymore.

Josh explained it to her later, laying on his bed with Eve sitting in the rocking chair that still had a corner of his room all to itself. He explained detention (drawing on the desks, and Eve thought it was more endearing than anything), and Patrick helping scrape gum off the benches in the locker room. He explained the sudden way Patrick had zoned because of accumulated sweat and axe smells, the way Josh’s instincts suddenly leapt to the guardian’s defence.

Explained the way Patrick’s eyes had gone glazed with the empathy. Explained the slow, terrifying steps backing Josh into the wall of lockers, and then the way Josh had reached out with the same power that had only a moment ago been soothing.

Explained the way he had _yanked_ sideways and Patrick had fallen, shocked, and hadn’t seemed to understand or remember what had happened. And Eve listened, and nodded, and reaffirmed to the both of them that they couldn’t risk telling his father.

Besides, if they did then Bill would insist they follow the law and take Josh to a Keep to be registered. And then they’d test him, some dead-eyed emissary touching his temples the way Eve so often did, but they wouldn’t be doing it to _help,_ and under that kind of scrutiny they’d _realize._ Josh would be found out. He’d be _taken away._

Though Eve didn’t think herself a strong woman, she knew she’d die before she let that happen.

Two years later she got her wish.

Bill walked in on her replacing Josh’s deodorant with a scent-neutralizing spray that would hide him from all but the most powerful of guardians. Bill wasn’t particularly powerful, but he wasn’t an idiot either. It was one of the reasons she’d fallen for him when she’d been young and stupid.

“You bitch!” He’d grabbed her by the hair, dragged her down the stairs and not cared that her bones bumped on each hard step. “How long? How long have you been hiding this?”

Gasping, she held onto his forearm with both hands. There had to be a way out of this, to make him think he’d only misunderstood. And though she knew she wasn’t nearly as powerful as her son, she remembered what he’d done, and she reached out to Bill easy as breathing.

Even after all the betrayals their bond sung with the strength of two decades of knowing each other. The moment Eve could scent him, sweet rot and pine, the very outermost edges of the empathy shield _she_ had given him, she attacked. _You got it wrong,_ she screamed in her mind. _He’s not an emissary. You’re wrong._

Wetness dripped down her lips - a nosebleed? For a single instant as they reached the bottom of the stairs, Bill paused, and Eve hoped against hope that she’d succeeded. Then the pain split her skull in a blinding blow much worse than anything Bill was capable of. He took another step, further into the living room, and Eve tried to steel herself.

“The brat’s been _in my head,_ hasn’t he?” Bill was snarling, chocolate hair falling in his face. _“That’s_ why I’ve never hit him. Thought it was weird, but as soon as he gets home I’m -”

Eve lashed out before she could think. Her foot hit the back of his knee, and it buckled hard enough that he only barely caught himself on the coffee table. He had to let go of her to do it, too, so now she could stand on shaky legs.

“Don’t.” Her voice didn’t shake as much as she’d expected. _“Don’t hurt him.”_

Though she accompanied the words with a punch of empathy to his mind, she already knew it wouldn’t matter. He barely blinked.

And his fist, when it met her temple, was as hard as it had always been.

She went down again, and his boot landed hard in her ribs. He wasn’t supposed to wear them into the house, a tiny piece of her noted. But most of her was focused on the pain, the blur of tears in her eyes, and the words that tumbled out of Bill’s mouth with increasing urgency.

“It’s all _his_ fault. He’s in your head too, don’t you see? No one’s that _good,_ or _sweet_ or _innocent,_ definitely not a fifteen year old boy. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was talking every last girl in class into taking their tops off for him after school.”

“Don’t _talk_ about him like that,” she sobbed. “He’s our son!”

“Exactly,” Bill shot back. “He’s my son, too.”

His next kick caused something to _snap_ in her torso, and her breathing went shallow with a lancing pain she’d never felt before. She tried her best to curl up, to protect herself from further damage, but Bill was furious like a wounded animal. She remembered thinking that his rage made him vulnerable, remembered wanting to protect him when he’d been a shaking wreck of a nineteen-year-old, sitting in the Keep’s matchmaking room.

Blood splattered from her lips when she coughed brokenly, and she felt blackness encroaching on the edges of her vision even before Bill’s heel smashed her forehead into the carpet. She didn’t want to die here. Josh still needed her, he was still her baby, and what if he made the same mistakes she had? She needed to be there, _needed to be._

“Mom?” She heard, as if from a great distance. And she was happy for an instant that Josh’s voice, and not Bill’s, might be the last one she’d hear.

Fear washed through her like a wave of oil slicking over her surface. _No, he couldn’t be here,_ Bill would _kill_ him.

Cracking her eyes open took what felt like all of her strength, and even then one was too swollen shut to see out of. But Eve could see enough to watch the way Josh took in the scene, the way Bill turned his back on her and yelled, “You lying, scheming little _monster._ D’you see what you’ve made me do?”

_“No,”_ she breathed. Bill raised his hand, open-palmed, and old dred settled in her belly.

But before the blow could land on Josh’s unblemished cheek, Bill faltered. He tried again, and again his hand simply… stopped, when it got too close to Josh. Eve couldn’t see his face but easily imagined the expression of confusion on it, and then his knees buckled, and he _fell._

His head hit the floor with a sickening _thump,_ but when it lolled on his limp neck and she got a good look at his face, she saw that a trail of blood dripped down his nose, not dissimilar to her own. His glazed eyes stared outwards, no anger or self-righteousness in them, not anymore. He had been dead before he hit the ground. Dead because Josh had needed to defend himself somehow, and she suddenly felt a lot better about leaving Josh to fend for himself.

But she wasn’t done just yet. Death by empathy - she had no idea what that would look like in an autopsy. And Josh was standing, staring, eyes dry as if to make up for the rare tears Eve could still feel on her cheeks, even as she smiled at him and croaked, “Baby, can you get the lockbox from the mantle?”

It took another repetition of _“baby”_ before he was moving on newborn-deer legs, wobbling towards the fireplace and reaching for the metallic box sitting there. She told him to be careful, “P-pick it up in your shirt, Josh.” She interrupted herself with a wet, rattling cough before she could finish with, “Don’t leave fingerprints. The password is oh-six-two-f-five.”

Fuck, talking hurt. But Josh was her good boy, did exactly as she said. She knew her own prints would be all over the box. Just looking at the item inside brought its taste to mind.

Josh pressed the little revolver into her palm, but when she told him to leave, he seemed reluctant. _“Mom,”_ he said, and the single word had more pleading than she’d thought could be packed into it.

“I promise,” she whispered. “Th-this is the last thing I’ll ever ask, baby, please. Go upst-stairs. Call an ambulance. _Don’t come back down.”_

He did. His footsteps were heavy going towards his room.

Part of her wanted to listen in on what he’d tell 911 dispatch, but she knew she shouldn’t delay. The new shock of adrenaline seeing Josh had given her was fading fast. She needed to act, to hold her arm out and brace it as best she could, to cock the hammer and _pull the trigger._

Brain matter sprayed out from the back of Bill’s head, but all Eve could see was the neat little hole in the front, right between his eyes. It drooled blood lazily, forming a third tiny river down his face to match the ones from his nose. She hoped they didn’t look at the scene too closely.

Though it was only barely, she was still conscious when the paramedics rushed in. She only registered the trip from floor to stretcher, and then stretcher to ambulance, as a blur of slightly-worse pain. But she heard them exclaim over her condition, heard _internal bleeding_ and _what the fuck happened, she’s an emissary right?_

None of it was important. As her eyes drifted shut for the last time, she knew that at least one of them had gone upstairs to her son. He wasn’t alone right now.

With powers like his, he’d never be alone. Never be helpless. She died smiling, and holding a nurse’s hand with a grip too gentle to bruise.


	2. A Nightmare

Josh walked across a landscape so dry he didn’t think it had ever seen rain. Or, if it had, it had been too long to remember. He thought at first that it was a desert, but the land beneath him was run through with strange cracks and too dense to be sand. It crunched under his bare feet as he stepped forward.

His lips were cracked to match the earth, and the sun pounded down on him from above. He didn’t burn easily, but he knew his skin would be peeling after this. It _hurt._

Ahead of him he heard an anguished sound. He turned his head left and right, body sluggish with dehydration, and saw a pale shape stirring on the ground in front of him. He rushed to it, limbs filling with strength at the thought that whoever it was needed help.

As he neared them, he saw that it was not a _who,_ but a _what._ An immense swan, with wings that spread wider than his arms across the ground. More than that, it shone _golden_ in the sunlight. It was nearly blinding.

Crouching beside it, Josh tried to determine if the thing was still alive. It made no more sounds, but yes, he could see its sides moving with each breath. At the next moment its eyes opened, startlingly blue against the ring of black that circled its beak. Those eyes were entirely too human, and Josh flinched away before he could think better of it.

A shadow passed over the two of them, too swift to provide any relief from the heat. But when Josh lifted his head to see what it had been, he saw his _castle._

His heart pounded in his chest. There was little to distinguish it from a normal cumulonimbus from this angle, but he knew, deep down, that it was _him._ Every bump and wisp as familiar to him as his own heartbeat. He reached up to the sky, fingers clawed, and tried to drag his cloud to himself and the swan both.

 _Please,_ he called to it. _We need you. Help us, protect us. Please._

It came. Of course it did; it was _his._

Slowly, as if it was moving against some immense wind Josh couldn’t feel, it settled back over them. The moment he felt its shade, the sweat slicking his hair to his shoulders began to cool in blessed relief. This was good, but the swan’s eye had closed in something close to resignation. Josh wasn’t sure why, but he couldn’t let it die. This wasn’t even because of his usual guilt at feeling someone’s anguish, since he couldn’t use empathy on animals. He just _wanted_ to help.

 _Rain._ Oh, if only he could make rain, rain like the sprinklers in his greenhouse, rain cold as the drafts that wafted through his stone halls.

Even as he thought it, he knew it was possible, and reached again for the dark underside of his mindscape. Humid and heavy, laden with liquid, with life. He could do this.

Pull, and _pull,_ and once again it felt like he was fighting against some sort of opposing force. But he kept going, sweat springing (cold now) to his brow. The aches had not subsided with the heat. He held himself back, exertion feeling like needles in his flesh, right up until he heard another sound from the swan. He could swear the plaintive croon was encouragement.

Like a dam bursting, the rain finally began to fall. Josh felt the resistance slip away, and for a long instant he simply shut his eyes and waited for gravity to carry sweet wetness downwards. The first drop hit his upturned forehead like a gentle kiss.

And then there came the torrent. He was soaked through in seconds, and the splashing sound from beside him implied the same of the swan. His arms stretched out at his sides, as if to fold the water in an embrace. His skin felt slick and finally, _finally_ soothed of the burning sun, though the water wasn’t as cold as he’d hoped.

Opening his mouth, he tried to catch some sweet rain on his tongue. But to his surprise, he tasted salt.

Josh’s eyes opened on the sight of red falling from the sky, streaking down his naked body and pooling around his feet. The swan screamed.

_“Hey man, you okay?”_

Shooting up straight in bed, Josh covered his mouth with one hand. He could still taste the salt; the dream had been _so real._ Beside him, a brown-haired man was giving him concerned looks, one broad hand hovering awkwardly over his shoulder. It took Josh a moment to remember he’d slept with that man last night.

Fuck, what was his name? Keith, Kenneth, something like that…

“Sorry,” Josh forced a smile as he spoke. “Nightmare. What time is it?”

Brown-hair rolled over to look at his bedside table, the clock on it glowing with red LED numbers. “Almost six,” he said. “You sure you’re good?”

“Yeah, I’m good.” Josh took one last, lingering look at the span of the man’s shoulders, wide and thickly muscled, before he forced his legs over the side of the bed and onto the wooden floor. They still felt a bit wobbly, so the sex must’ve been _really_ good.

Unfortunately, Josh was having trouble remembering it, which meant the booze must have been even better.

“Aw, not coming back to bed?” What’s-his-name sounded all kicked puppy now. Sadly, that wouldn’t work on Josh, not when they were both exuding satisfaction like the ground sending up a morning fog.

“Got work soon. I didn’t mean to stay over, but you really tired me out, big guy.”

As always, a good compliment shut up Josh’s temporary bed partner long enough for him to get dressed. Not that he was dressing in much: last night he’d only worn a black mesh shirt and leather pants that were practically painted on. Luckily he hadn’t lost his trusty messenger bag, or the oversized bomber jacket he’d tucked into it.

On his way out, however, the man shouted after him, “I never got your number, dude.”

“I never planned on giving it.” Josh tossed a flirty smile over his shoulder, knowing that his high black boots and perky ass painted quite the picture. “See you around, handsome.”

He made extra sure the door locked behind him. Not that he was worried, but, well, he _was_ going to be late for work if he lingered any longer.

Already the morning air was muggier than Josh would’ve liked. He almost missed the dry heat of the dream, but even remembering it sent a shudder up his spine, so… maybe not. From his castle, he watched his progress through the city, wincing when he realized that his shields were leaking. At the moment he looked like a candle, flickering weak light so much more faint than a normal emissary.

But that wasn’t good enough. Josh clenched a fist in his jacket pocket, felt his cloud contract into a smaller, denser thing, laden with rain (not _blood,_ fuck). The light far beneath his castle went out. He’d need to properly fix his shields tonight.

Digging through his bag, Josh retrieved a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. The fine tremor in his hands stilled as he finally managed a drag of sweet smoke for the first time since last night.

It was always unsettling, seeing himself like this. Dark as if he were baseline, or dead, and yet he could sense every emissary and guardian within a sixty mile radius if he cared to try. It was laughable, and on his darker nights he _did_ mock himself as he stared out over his own personal inverse-constellations.

Today, however, he couldn’t indulge in his favored melodrama. He made his way up the narrow stairs to his apartment two at a time, slid in the door and kicked his boots off in a single motion.

Pants got slung over the back of his couch, his shirt somewhere in the direction of the kitchen. His socks and underwear were shucked onto his bed as soon as he was through the doorway, and then he was grabbing his last clean set of each from the milk crates he used as a wardrobe.

There wasn’t enough time for a shower, so Josh sprayed himself down liberally with scent-neutralizer before he put his uniform on. The Early-Bird Diner dressed its employees in sky blue cloth and sunshine trim. Ruth said it suited him more than the colors he usually wore.

Mostly Josh thought it brought out the red in his eyes when he was feeling hungover, but he didn’t tell her that. Ever since Jenna, er, _happened,_ she’d been much less happy to go along with his binge drinking. It was part of why he didn’t take a swig from the bottle of Jim Beam sitting on his kitchen counter on his way back out the door. Admittedly, he didn’t grab any food from the dozen or so pizza boxes strewn about either, but the diner was usually happy to feed him.

Just like that he was on his way again, not that his apartment had provided much relief from the now oppressive heat. The diner was, thankfully, fully air conditioned, and very close to where he lived. He still had no idea how he’d gotten lucky enough to be hired there.

They’d even hired Ruth on his recommendation, and while that _had_ been a great decision, he didn’t know why they’d taken his word on _anything._

Instead of the main roads, he made his way there via dingy alleyways. Sure, he had to dodge a number of used needles on the way, but after living in the city for five years he was comfortable finding his way around like this. More so than he was on the labelled roads, even.

As he approached the back door to the diner, Josh dropped his second cig of the day and put it out under his heel. Before he’d even finished the action, the door had opened, and _speak of the devil._ “What’s a pretty girl like you doing in a place like this?” Josh drawled with an affected accent.

“Telling you that you’re late,” she smiled up at him, a measly 4’10 to his more average height. “And also that other-Josh cooked you some eggs.”

“Nice,” Josh ruffled her wispy black hair as he walked past her. She whined something about how she was meant to be the older sister, damnit, and Josh hid a smile in his jacket collar.

Hanging his bag on its hook, Josh dug through for a moment, “By the way, do you have -”

A hairband hit him in the back of the head, hard enough to sting, but he caught it easily before it fell to the ground. “Some big sister you are,” he griped.

Ruth giggled behind him as he tugged his hair into an unruly ponytail. A smile spread on his face at the familiar sound.

The camaraderie they got to indulge in at work was only one more reason for him to love the place. It was small, usually packed from sunup to sundown, and from the moment he’d walked in with a shitty resume clutched in his sweaty fist, other-Josh (the owner) had decided it would be his new home.

(And he remembered the terror coming in the first time, not knowing what to expect. He hadn’t wanted to be around guardians _ever,_ his mother’s warnings echoing in his ears each time one came near. But lack of exposure made him more sensitive, and _oh,_ the hours of walking through alleys, scrubbing garbage into his clothes and hair to mask his scent after only one slip-up… _he_ _couldn’t do it again.)_

Suddenly, a gruff voice said from behind him, “Hurry it up lovebirds. We’ve got some important guests coming in today.”

“Nice to see you too, Josh,” Josh said. He tied his apron on and grabbed the plate of scrambled eggs from the counter, shoveling them into his mouth as fast as he could.

In response the old cook grunted and returned to his griddle. He was a big man, tall and with an ample belly that spoke to his skills as a chef. He was also baseline, which made Josh wonder why he’d decided to get his diner Keep-certified (it cost so much more to install the air purifiers for guardians and empathy-dampening insulation for emissaries). But Josh wasn’t one to pry, so he’d never asked. It would've been too hypocritical.

After washing his hands up quickly, and then thoroughly because Ruth gave him the stink eye, Josh finally stepped out of the kitchen to begin taking chairs down from where they’d been stacked on the tables. He paused, however, when he saw one table already set up.

“Oh yeah, I brought Jenna today,” Ruth said sheepishly.

“Wh - Ruth!” Josh spluttered, but he was secretly pleased.

At the sound of her name the six-year-old peeked up from her coloring to give him an identical smile to her mother. “Hi Uncle Josh!”

Seeing Ruth and Jenna side by side always warmed Josh’s heart. Jenna looked exactly like what Josh imagined Ruth as a child would have, skin a shade too dark to be a tan and black hair curling in baby-fine waves. She always smiled brightly, even when she was on the verge of sensory overload and tears welled in her dark eyes.

Most importantly, she was tiny. Ruth was the weakest emissary Josh had ever met, but even before she’d started HRT she’d had the perfect feminine figure. Josh still remembered walking into the foster home the first time, seeing his new sibling, and going, “He’s _older_ than me?” She’d just about slapped the derision straight off of his face.

Neither of them had expected to get a lifelong friend in that depressing place, but then they’d come out to each other, and Jenna had been born, and. Well. Josh didn’t regret it one bit.

“Hey there gremlin,” Josh finally said, ruffling Jenna’s hair the same way he’d done to Ruth. “You gonna stay out of the way today?”

“I’m not a gremlin,” she whined, at the same time someone behind Josh said, “I’ll keep an eye on her.”

Turning, Josh saw the top of a head of red hair, and smiled. “I didn’t know you were in today.”

“Yeah, well, I wasn’t planning it.” Tyler shrugged their shoulders, and continued with a belligerent expression, “But I got called into the tower for matchmaking this evening, so I had to switch with Ramirez.”

“Tough time,” Josh said sympathetically. Inside, though, he winced.

Ruth noticed, because of course she did, and she stepped up to boop them each on the nose in turn. “Hey, work now, talk later. The feds are coming in.”

Eyes crossed to see the place Ruth still had her finger pressed, it took Josh a moment to process what she’d said. Then his eyes were shooting up to stare at her brown ones, but she’d looked away - to Tyler, who Josh realized was leaking anxiety strong enough for him to taste it.

He wanted to volunteer to take care of their table, but… Thankfully, Ruth cut off this awkward silence as well. “I’ll handle them, but you guys have to pick up the slack, alright?”

“Right,” Josh and Tyler replied in stereo.

After that, work was, well, work. They opened their doors and the early crowd came filing in for their breakfasts, most taken to go or eaten almost as quickly as Josh’s had been. He kept an eye on the door for regulars he could snipe for good tips (and for unfamiliar agents, though he tried not to think about that).

It was during a down time, before the lunch rush when he was free to help Jenna with homework, when it happened.

Josh’s mindscape hadn’t changed much in the past five years. It always floated in a void, surrounded by shields and above the scattered lights of humanity.

But, rather abruptly, it was no longer alone in his sky.

Thank fuck he’d been sitting, because he was pretty sure his knees would’ve given out if he hadn’t been. As it was, he stared into space with his mouth slightly open, until Jenna shook his shoulder for a solid thirty seconds and he unfroze.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, but his mind was far away.

What the fuck _was_ that?

For all intents and purposes, it looked like… the sun. As it came closer (too fast, like a speeding car) it eclipsed the lights around it, and he saw that it _was_ far below him.

But it was no simple star. No guardian or emissary had _ever_ been that powerful, not that he’d heard of. And _he would have heard of this._

Once again, he cinched his cloud in small as it would go. Whoever it was _couldn’t_ be allowed to sense him. _They couldn’t._

Half an hour later, Josh had nearly chewed his way through his bottom lip, and they walked in the door.

Three of them, all men, and two big enough to make Josh perk up on a normal day. Today, however, he was too busy noticing the _light_ coming from one of them to care about his size. He was young, around Josh’s age, and his straight, blond hair was cut short and side parted so perfectly it would probably crunch with gel if he touched it. His eyes, though…

A blue like lightning. Like the surface of the ocean in a storm. They were all the more piercing for the way they stared out of that deceptive face, all closed-off masculine sternness with just a hint of femininity around his jaw, his slim nose, his cupid’s bow lips. Josh couldn’t look away, and not only because he _glowed._

Like this, he was the only thing Josh could sense. His empathy was damn near shut down, and even then the stranger seemed almost to have a faint halo around him.

How dangerous, how enticing it was.

Before he knew what he was doing he reached out to catch Ruth’s arm, the rag he’d been using to bus hanging limply in his other hand. “I’ll take their table,” he blurted.

Surprised, Ruth’s looked between Josh and the newcomers. “But they’re the dogs.”

He hadn’t noticed, with how preoccupied he’d been by that guardian _(guardian, guardian,_ his mind sang the word like a love-sick teenage girl in a soap opera) but they _were_ in Keep uniforms. Navy blue business suits, embroidered on the lapel with a simple sun rising over a flat horizon. Their ties were striped green and gold, the shades of the national branch. And while the guardian Josh had stared at was younger than average for a dog of the Keeps, the other two looked the part from head to toe.

Just when Josh was about to take back what he’d said, though, Ruth’s elbow hit him under his ribs. “I’ll give it to you, but don’t go seducing the big guy,” she said with a wink. “He’s baseline.”

Relief and terror warred in Josh’s chest, but he managed a wobbly smile and an, “I won’t.”

Like a man condemned, he walked up to the table where the trio was seated. A burly, middle-aged man with salt and pepper hair and a well groomed beard; another baseline man who looked more like a weasel than anything else; and the guardian. _Guardian._

 _Shut up,_ Josh told his brain harshly.

Aloud, he said, “Hello, my name is Josh, and I’ll be your server for today.”

“I’ll have a coke,” weasel said before Josh even had a chance to ask about drinks. His nasally voice and long, thin nose did nothing to compliment his lank, brown hair.

The handsome one Ruth clearly thought he wanted to fuck (and oh he was hot with that map of fine smile lines on his tan skin, but sadly Josh’s gaydar was giving him a big ‘ol nope) held his hands in front of him apologetically. “I’ll have coffee,” he said, like he was offering a peace treaty.

And then blue-eyed-blondie, looking like some ironically gorgeous recruitment poster for the worst kind of political rally, said, “Water.”

Josh waited a moment, but nothing more was forthcoming. “Would you like a slice of lemon with that?” He tried.

“No.”

Again there was a moment of silence. “...All right, then. I’ll bring those right out to you. Take your time looking at the menu.”

Josh retreated towards the kitchen. Ruth stood in the doorway, clearly trying to smother a grin.

“Don’t even,” he said.

“I didn’t say anything.”

Tyler shouldered their way between them, a tray balanced on one hand and a disgusted look on their face.

Serving Keep employees was always weird. Josh had told Ruth that he hated them for the fact they had doomed his mother to her fate - and that wasn’t a lie, though it was far from the whole truth. The oldest one, with his stormy grey eyes and salt-stained sailor’s skin, was exactly the sort of dog he liked seeing least. The sort with obvious kindness in his eyes, who held his huge hands carefully like he knew the harm he could do. If he worked for the Keeps, he _didn't_ know. He _couldn't_ know.

“I’ll have the sunrise breakfast with eggs benedict,” he said when Josh took his order, and then chuckled at a private joke.

Weasel groaned, “Benedict.” It took Josh a minute to realize that was the man’s name.

“Country fried steak,” gorgeous said. His voice was strange, lilting like it could be lyrical if he’d let it.

“House salad for me,” said weasel. “I’m trying to watch my weight.”

Privately, Josh thought gorgeous didn’t need any more protein, and weasel could use more meat on his bones. But it wasn’t his place to criticize ordinary customers, and if he tried to pull that shit with representatives of the national Keep, well. His stomach tightened with nausea.

He was almost certain they were going to manage to make it through the meal without anything happening (and that was both a disappointment and a weight off his shoulders), when the conversation took a turn for the weird. Josh did his best not to hover obviously as he loitered in the area around their table. He didn’t know why he was listening in, only that - _that guardian._

“We want this to go as smoothly as possible,” Benedict toyed with a third packet of sugar as he spoke, but didn’t dump it into his coffee. “We haven’t confirmed their membership yet.”

“We will in a couple of hours,” weasel sounded proud. “My index is fifty-two percent done.”

“Or, we’ll find that we’ve finally gotten the in we’ve been looking for.” Benedict’s quiet voice was very firm as he continued, “Ethan, you’re not to make a move until I say so.”

“I still don’t see why I’m here,” gorgeous, _Ethan,_ said in that musical voice of his.

“Neither do I,” whined weasel. “We should be arresting them for this, not asking politely.”

 _“Aegis_ reached out to _them,”_ Benedict pointed out.

Josh, who had been half lost in the fact that he wanted to hear Ethan sing (or moan), narrowly avoided stumbling face-first onto the ground.

Aegis. Aegis activity _in this city._ Oh god.

The Alliance of Emissaries and Guardians for the Improvement of Society was the largest international terrorist group that specifically targeted Keeps. They were also the oldest, being responsible for thousands of deaths since their founding in the early 1800’s.

Just like the Keeps themselves, Josh had no doubt that they would either use or kill him for his power if they ever found out what he was. Part of why he lived where he did was because he hadn’t heard anything about them within Michigan, at all.

Today was not proving good for Josh’s blood pressure, despite its pleasant start.

The keep employees continued to discuss their… plot, or whatever it was, but Josh didn’t learn anything else particularly interesting. Well, nothing particularly interesting besides the fact that that weasel was named Cleary and did something relating to computers. Josh supposed that went a long way to demonstrating exactly how peacefully they expected their meeting to go.

It was almost enough to make him scoff. Keeps were poison, and if the people they were going to talk to knew what was good for them they wouldn’t let the dogs in at all.

Then again, maybe those same people were the kind of morons who trusted Aegis’ “ideals,” so who knew.

They left without too much fanfare and with a rather generous tip, courtesy of Benedict. It really was a shame the man was straight; he was the sort Josh wouldn’t mind screaming _“daddy”_ for.

Tyler was giving Josh odd looks, and had been for much of their visit. Now that his shoulders were finally slumping out of the tension he hadn’t realized he’d been carrying, they walked up to him and nudged his side. “I haven’t seen any feds here before,” they muttered.

Shrugging, Josh turned away from the glass door as firmly as he could. “Hopefully they won’t come back for seconds,” he said. It felt kind of like a jynx as soon as it was out.

Even though he’d been the last to get in that morning, Josh was slated to get off work between Tyler and Ruth. The former high-fived Ramirez as he came in to replace them, though Josh could see the scowl on their face and knew they were angsting about their newest matchmaking session. As an emissary, they were required to go when the Keep called, and they were powerful enough that the call came fairly often. They often expressed envy that Ruth was so weak as to go overlooked amongst all the unbonded emissaries in the city.

 _If only they knew,_ Josh thought sardonically, as Jenna lectured Tyler about not being too mean to whatever poor guardian showed up.

Time passed slowly, the way it always did when he was at work. But the end of his shift came not too long after, and Josh found himself crammed in a corner of the tiny kitchen as he finally tried to untie his apron. Jenna was chattering, Josh was facing the door because he wanted to leave already but the damn knot was _stuck,_ and then Ruth gasped.

Suddenly, everything stopped.

In some ways, it was like when the sun - Ethan - had suddenly gotten close enough for Josh to  sense. It was new, it was big and bright and blinding.

But in most ways, it was _worse._

Josh knew his knees gave out this time, knew that he hit the ground, but he couldn’t see it. His knees sent jolts of pain through a body that seemed miles away, and a small hand touched his shoulder but he couldn’t hear Jenna, couldn’t -

_“Get down!”_

Though the voice was now snarling and panicked, Josh recognized it from this morning. Benedict.

_“Oh my god, they zoned him, god, god, fuck.”_

And there was Cleary, voice gone high and cracking, and Josh still couldn’t see anything.

No, no, he could. A single drop of clear liquid on an otherwise spotless hardwood floor. The light reflecting off it was _everything,_ all he could focus on, and. And.

Josh figured it out, finally. _A zone._ The guardian, so powerful and beautiful and incandescent, had been rendered completely helpless by his own overdeveloped senses.

And though he knew it was stupid, so stupid, he reached out with hands made of water vapor and chill and covered those beautiful blue eyes. Said, mind-to-mind in a way he hadn’t, not since his mom, not even when Jenna had been a newborn and hadn’t been able to sleep, _“Lessen it, sweetheart. Lessen it, look at the forest now, not the trees.”_

He could’ve sworn he felt feathers against his arms in the instant before Ethan’s vision came into focus.

For a single second Josh saw the room Ethan was standing in, lavender walls and a woman with grey hair escaping a tightly-done bun and a gas mask, of all things, covering most of her face. The hatred in her nearly colorless blue eyes was breathtaking.

Then he was reeling backwards, away away _away,_ and gasping breaths as the door in front of him abruptly came back into focus.

“Mom? Uncle Josh? _Mom!”_

Turning his head, Josh saw Ruth laying not far from him. He wiped the back of his hand over his nose at a faint tickle sensation, and then stumbled towards her. “Ruth? Are you okay?”

A sob made him realize Jenna was crying. Even as he reached for the shoulder she hadn’t clutched, though, Ruth began to stir. “Wh-what? Happened?” She asked haltingly.

“Ruth!” That was other Josh, poking his head in from the main dining area, and when had he gone out there? “Something real darn shady’s going on. All the emissaries just collapsed.”

“What?” Ruth sounded dazed, but Josh felt so much worse. Frozen, or carved of stone.

“It happened outside, too. Come look!”

Jenna helped her mom stand, and then led her by the hand to the main room. Josh followed on numb feet, and somehow it felt _more_ surreal as he took in the view in front of him.

The diner’s owner had been right. Every single emissary was recovering from what looked like a hard blow to the head, eyes slightly unfocused. A fair number of them were sporting nosebleeds too. It probably hadn’t been as noticeable an event elsewhere in the city, but in a Keep-certified shop, at the beginning of the lunch hour, well.

Though he knew what he would see, Josh still felt his eyes drawn to the back of his hand. To the smudge of blood there.

“I don’t think Jenna should be here right now,” Josh said softly.

Ruth actually jumped a bit, surprised at the reminder of the daughter currently clutching her dress in a white-knuckled grip. “Yeah,” she agreed. “Yeah. Jenna?”

Mouth still hanging slightly open, Jenna nodded. She didn’t meet her mother’s gaze until she was shaken slightly.

“Please, go with Uncle Josh like we planned, okay? I promise, I’m fine.”

It said a lot about how frightened Jenna was that she meekly agreed. Josh took her other hand, and Ruth let go somewhat reluctantly. “It’ll be okay,” he whispered to her. “I don’t know what that was, but it didn’t really hurt anyone, did it?”

“I don’t think so,” she agreed. But she was frowning rather hard.

Somehow, Josh knew they were going to have to talk more about this later. But for now he clutched at the hope that maybe, _maybe,_ no one had seen him collapse and realized what it meant. He took Jenna out the back door, eventually picking her up bodily when she sagged. She was delicate, and Josh knew a normal day at the diner could overwhelm her.

“Wanna go to my house, or yours?” He offered her.

“Mine,” Jenna said. Her hand was a firm pressure on his arm, small fingers so much like the feathers he’d thought he felt.

That must have been all it was. Fingers, not feathers.

Fuck, he needed a drink.

\---------------

Ethan held one brittle-thin wrist in each hand, but his eyes were not on the back of the woman he currently had pinned to the ground. Instead, he was looking in the same direction that had Cleary Wagner making a wounded sound.

A computer, smashed to pieces.

“Membership confirmed?” Ethan asked. His voice was monotone, but those who knew him well enough could hear the smirk in it.

Benedict was one of those people. His eyes flicked to Ethan, and he shook his head, just a bit.

“We aren’t Aegis members,” Maria Guerra said. Ethan mostly saw her as a small puff of black hair standing behind Benedict. Her voice trembled with fury. “But we aren’t your friends, either.”

“This wasn’t meant to be an arrest,” Benedict said tiredly.

“Well then, you’ll be happy to hear that it was my idea,” said the woman Ethan was straddling.

_“Ash!”_

Ignoring Maria’s aghast gasp, she continued, “I’m an unregistered guardian. Have the big one check. Maria was just trying to protect me.”

The whole room went dead silent. Ethan took in a deep breath through his nose, something he still wasn’t too happy about after they’d dumped that… _stuff_ all over him. His clothing was all sticky and wet now.

“Is that true?” Benedict sounded tired now.

“Yes. And a powerful one.”

Ash twitched again in his grip. He thought she might not have expected him to pick up on that, with the disgusting stuff still clogging his nose.

People always underestimated him. That they had thought they’d take him down with something that simple…

 _They almost did,_ whispered a derisive voice in his mind. He shuddered.

Cleary was sauntering forwards, a pair of handcuffs in his hand. He sneered, and Ethan knew it was at least half because he hated anyone who dared hurt technology. “Ma’am, I’m afraid we need to take you in for questioning.”

“No, please!”

It was easy for Ethan to ignore Maria’s blubbering in the background. She’d been harboring a criminal. She was guilty too.

He breathed in again, trying to discern if Maria had somehow faked her way through her strength evaluation test. But no, she was a nearly perfectly average guardian, just like her papers had said she would be.

As he sniffed, however, he caught a scent that didn’t belong in the penthouse at all. A scent belonging to someone who he knew had never stepped foot here, never touched anything here, and yet had _been_ here, earlier.

Ethan was tempted to tell Benedict he hadn’t pulled himself out of the zone. If his direct superior had been there, he knew he would’ve spoken without a second thought. But as it was, he hesitated, and the scent of cool, swift winds was soothing him even now. He didn’t want to admit it. He didn’t want it to be true, because no one had ever been able to fool him before, and he hadn’t noticed anything amiss this morning.

He needed to find the waiter from that diner. Alone, because he didn’t know how the conversation was going to go, but he couldn’t see it going _well._ Alone, because the slender waiter had been beautiful, and had made Ethan clam up even more than usual at breakfast.

Alone, because Ethan heard the words like an echo in his mind, and he _couldn’t get rid of them._

_“Look at the forest now, not the trees.”_


	3. Firsts and Lasts

Loathing was thick on his tongue when Josh sat cross-legged on his ratty carpet floor.

Or maybe that was just the leftover taste of bile. The end of yesterday had been one long nightmare, and by the time it had ended he’d needed a veritable gallon of booze to feel like himself again. Even though it was already 1:00 PM, he still didn’t feel quite normal yet.

But he’d put it off for too long; he needed to fix his shields,  _ now. _ Before he headed back to the diner for the closing shift he’d have been happy to have last week.

Right now, he could think of nothing he wanted less than going to work, but alas, he had rent to pay. So here he was, sitting. Trying very hard to introspect and forget the outside world.

The outermost layer of his shields was a red haze. From far away, it would obscure his cloud into the most diffuse of fogs, like the omen of a storm to come. Up close, however, it was more obviously made up of ice crystals, which broke apart the light that touched them and made his fingers go numb where they rested on his knees.

As he floated through the shield, tossing up handfuls of glittering crystals, he recalled the night before almost against his will.

“You fell down too,” Jenna had said. Dark eyes so big, like pools of water on an overcast night.

Josh had forced a laugh and waved his hand dismissively. It was easier, looking at her upside-down with his head hanging over the armrest of their couch. “It was just a coincidence. I had a pretty crazy night last night.”

And she hadn’t argued, but she’d looked with eyes too old for six, that expression that reminded him  _ she _ had been the one to comfort Ruth when she’d asked where her other mom was.

He moved on to the next layer of his shields, and tried to forget.

These were winds that should move swiftly enough to slice his consciousness clean through. Only Josh knew the pattern they moved in and could safely navigate them. When he first touched this layer, he found those winds nearly stilled, and felt only the faintest tingle in his scalp as they tried to move his hair.

A furrow grew between his brows as he invigorated them, sent himself tumbling like a leaf in the fall, momentum carrying him in dizzying circles and ruining his already wonky metaphysical perception. It could have been fun, almost like a roller coaster inside his own head, but for each jet of air he touched he remembered things that, yes, gave him the strength of anger he needed, but fuck he didn’t want to remember them.

Jenna put away in bed, and Ruth taking him aside to talk at their kitchen table. He’d helped her build it. As she spoke, he’d fit his hand to one of the tiles that held Jenna’s tiny handprint.

“So I looked online for answers and, Josh - It’s  _ so weird.” _

She weaved a tale of Aegis operatives setting off an experimental empathy bomb, and he had to fight not to tell her. It would be so easy. She was such an honest person, she deserved to know.

But she was  _ too _ honest, and so when she said, “But I can’t believe it. I mean, I met Ash Guerra, do you remember? She did that fundraiser to help people pay for their transitions and…”

He had simply replied, “I remember.” Ruth looked nothing so much as lost, perhaps with a shade of betrayal in her eyes, and Josh’s chest ached.

His third and final shield was a deceptively simple layer of fog. It was still thick, but could stand to be thicker, and the voice he heard in his mind as he repaired it was neither Ruth’s nor Jenna’s, but his mother’s.

“Most emissaries only maintain one shield on their own, baby, but I know you can do more. This first one is just a last resort; no one’s gonna get close enough for you to need it, you hear me? But it’ll hide you, make you harder to find even when they’re looking for you. If they’re in the fog they’re in your mindscape, baby, and they’ll sense some of your thoughts. But they won’t be able to find the center, and they won’t be able to get out unless you let them.”

They had modeled it after her own riptide. A shield like this, she’d explained, you couldn’t find in any textbook or training class. Her mother had taught it to her when she’d gone online. Even a guardian bonded to you couldn’t get past it if you didn’t want them to.

Josh wondered, now, if she’d had him build it this way so he could kill anyone who got too close.

Being in the fog was… weird. This in between distance where he heard echoes of his own thoughts as if they came from his castle and not himself. Within the stone walls, everything rang with each emotion he felt, and in the outer layers his consciousness was far enough to be separate from it. But here was simultaneously neither and both.

It was with no small amount of relief that he finished his somewhat unorthodox “meditation,” and retreated back into his castle. The greenhouse, specifically, because he didn’t want to see the people his upside-down observatory would show him, and he wanted something softer than stone to surround him.

Sweet, fresh, cool air seemed to caress him as he rested at the base of his young oak tree. He was tired, and so he didn’t conceptualize a body for himself, simply resting his consciousness in something that looked like a greenish haze around the roots. Thinking too hard about why his empathy visualized things the way it did made his head hurt.

Instead, he toyed with the ivy climbing the tree, let a breeze flow through the leaves of both plants affectionately, and sighed.

Yesterday had been hard, to say the least. And more than anything that was because he’d worried for Ruth and Jenna’s safety, though in different ways. For not the first time he’d thought about telling them what he was, and known that doing so would more put them in danger than it would arm them with knowledge. Thankfully, it was a pretty safe bet that yesterday had been a fluke, and their ordinary lives would be back as of today.

Caring for them, he knew, wasn’t a weakness. Even when his self loathing tried to tell him it was.

And so Josh pulled himself together and back into the real world. He blinked hard, and stood to stack empty pizza boxes and search for something that wasn’t too stale to eat.

Determinedly, he didn’t think about the guardian he’d seen yesterday. The man could very well be back on his way to the national branch by now, and even if he looked for the mysterious emissary who had rescued him, Josh knew he’d left behind no clues.

Today Josh showed up to work freshly showered, a tiny bit tipsy, and what he considered to be well prepared. Ruth wasn’t working, but Tyler rolled their eyes when he greeted them, so he supposed he was doing a good enough job of putting on a happy face.

Tyler, on the other hand, was not. Deep shadows underlined their eyes, and when Josh asked if they were okay, they very nearly spat onto the plate they were taking out of the dishwasher. “Fucking twitter. Fucking empathy bomb. Fucking Keeps.”

“Amen to that,” Josh agreed. “The matchmaking session went that well, huh?”

“Considering I left it only to find a bunch of collapsed emissaries on the street outside, yeah.”

“It didn’t get to you too?” Josh let the surprise color his voice; Tyler had been further from Ethan, but was much more powerful than Ruth.

“Those gross matchmaking rooms leave you totally deaf to anything happening outside them. I was locked in with that prick for an hour, and then I leave and see  _ that.” _

“It  _ was _ pretty unsettling.”

Tyler continued speaking as though they hadn’t heard his bland response. “I just can’t believe it was an empathy bomb, y’know? Like, our government’s been trying to develop one for forever, and then a bunch of randos manage what the best scientists in the world haven’t?”

Clearing his throat, Josh nodded. “That, uh, I didn’t think of that.”

“Of course not, you’re baseline. But that didn’t feel like an empathy bomb. I don’t know what it was, but it wasn’t  _ that.” _

After swallowing hard enough to dislodge the lump in his throat, Josh asked, “How do you know what an empathy bomb feels like if no one’s ever made one?”

“I don’t know,” Tyler grumbled. “But I know it  _ wouldn’t _ feel like that. I’ll bet it was the feds’ fault, they love to blame every mission that goes wrong on Aegis.”

“They make easy targets,” Josh said diplomatically.

“Guess so.”

After their rant, Tyler was rather pensieve for a bit. Today was blessedly slow, and Josh was free to stare out the front door at the big brick buildings across the street. As the sun made its lethargic way across the sky, he could sense a second sun in his mind, and knew Ethan hadn’t left the city yet.

Somehow, despite that, it was still a surprise when he walked in the door.

This time around he was alone, but he still wore his uniform and stood out like a sore thumb. He scanned the room, blue eyes inscrutable, and then locked onto Josh.

Walked up to him.

Stuck his hand out.

Said, “My name is Ethan Rey. I’d like to talk to you,” paused, looked down at the nametag on his chest, “Josh.”

This couldn’t be happening, this couldn’t be happening,  _ this couldn’t be happening. _

Josh backed away, looked left and right, and heard Tyler say, “I’ll cover for you,” as if from a great distance.

\---------------

On his way out of the Keep, Benedict had stopped Ethan. He’d thought that by exiting from the garage he’d be able to avoid anyone seeing him, but Benedict always seemed to know more about what he was thinking than  _ he _ did. The older man gave Ethan a cautious look, one Ethan hadn’t seen on him since shortly after they’d met.

“Where are you going?” He’d asked.

This, Ethan had thought with some relief, wasn’t something he needed to lie about.

“The diner we went to yesterday.”

A darkness had shadowed Benedict’s eyes. “You going after that pretty little waiter?”

Ethan had started guiltily, then realized what Benedict had been implying and blushed furiously. “No! No, that’s not, I’m - that would be an unacceptable distraction to engage in while we’re still investigating Ash’s involvement with -”

With a snap of his teeth he’d shut himself up. Benedict walked forward, one hand up, and put it on Ethan’s shoulder. He’d kindly ignored the way Ethan stiffened as he approached.

“You deserve a break,” he’d said. Ethan’s breath had caught.

“Sir, you can’t mean that you  _ want _ me to…”

“Don’t call me sir,” Benedict chastised gently. Then he smiled, an expression that always reminded Ethan of his father, the moment before he could quash the memory. “And yeah, kind of. I’ve never seen you show any interest in the past three years, kid. It was frankly a bit worrying.”

Only his strict training had kept Ethan’s mouth from dropping open. Even though it was mortifying, Benedict had just handed him the best excuse he could’ve hoped for, and saved him the trouble of making up a lie besides. Ethan wasn’t the best at lying.

“Thank you, s - Benedict.” He hadn’t needed to feign the stumbling over his words, either. He really  _ was  _ caught off balance.

“See you later, kid. Have fun.”

Somehow Ethan felt that Benedict would be disappointed in him several times over if he knew what was really going on, and not just because Ethan was hiding his suspicions about an unregistered guide.

_ This is only until I get proof, _ Ethan told himself.  _ Once I know for sure, I’ll tell someone. I don’t want to accuse an innocent man. _

Ethan really wasn’t the best at lying.

Which was why, when the redheaded waitress (er, waiter? He wasn’t sure) offered to give him and Josh the opportunity to talk, he didn’t thank… her, him, whatever. He simply nodded, took Josh’s wrist, and towed him out the front door.

As they rounded the side of the building and entered a sweltering alleyway, Josh pulled away harshly. Ethan watched him breathe, too deep, and thought the sweat on his brow was probably not from the heat. When he scented him, however, all he caught was (salt and the faintest hints of body odor and laundry detergent and that curious absence that comes from scent neutralizing deodorant and his natural smell like the heat peppers left behind on Ethan’s tongue).

So many things. But all of them totally normal.

“What do you want from me?” Josh asked. Demanded, really.

“I, uh,” Ethan looked into his hazel eyes and found that he had trouble answering that question.

“You can’t just pull me away from my job like this. I don’t care how  _ important _ you are.”

The degree of derision there was shocking, actually. Josh had been nothing but polite while he’d been serving Ethan. It kind of dried his mouth out, tangled his words in his throat, but then he remembered the excuse Benedict had given him. An excuse he could make use of.

“Let me take you out to dinner.”

Those perfect, dusky pink lips dropped open. Ethan blinked at the thought he’d just had while Josh tried to process what was clearly a surprise.

“No.”

A small blip in his heartbeat, which had been climbing steadily higher since the conversation started. Ethan bit his bottom lip. “Why not?”

“I don’t go out to dinner with _ guardians.” _

Steady heartbeats, and Ethan tilted his head. “How do you know I’m a guardian?”

“My friend told me.”

_ Lie. _ A big, huge, terrifying lie, if Josh’s heart rate was anything to go by. But that wasn’t the proof Ethan was looking for, and he didn’t know what to do with the information, so. “Are you sure you’re not interested in one meal?”

“Nope.” Though the word was vicious, Ethan heard that same trip in the beat of his heart again.

To be entirely honest, Ethan had not a clue as to what he was doing. But he knew he had to spend more time with this person, deep down somewhere he didn’t fully understand, and he knew if he pushed too hard then Josh would simply close up entirely. So, his own heartbeat pounding almost deafeningly in his ears, Ethan tried something he’d never tried outside one, specific, room.

Clasping his hands in front of him, Ethan bent his knees so he and Josh were of a height, and said, “Please?”

The tone alone had him flushing from his neck to his ears. Only one person had heard it before. But it felt strangely right to use with Josh.

And, he saw with growing hope, it had Josh’s pupils dilating in the moment before he turned away. His breath was shallower, and when he shook his head, the denial was weak.

“I want to - get to know you,” Ethan tried again. “I don’t know why.”

For some reason, his last words had Josh’s breath catching in his throat, a hitch so harsh it was almost a cough. Ethan waited with bated breath for his answer.

“Okay.” Josh’s whisper was too quiet for someone baseline to hear.

Thankfully, Ethan was far from baseline.

“Thank you,” he said, more relieved than anything else. That had been his last ditch attempt.

“But it has to be at the Early-Bird,” Josh insisted. “I need the employee discount. You’re  _ not _ paying for me.”

There had been… something strange, there, when Josh had said that last bit. But Ethan had what he wanted, and wasn’t going to look too deeply into it for fear of seeing something he might not like.

_ What about finding out the truth? _ A voice whispered in Ethan’s mind.  _ You’re going to have to look _ very  _ closely for that. _

_ At dinner, _ he insisted to himself.

“Could I have your email?” He asked.

Josh froze, then laughed, a surprisingly bright sound. It made him look younger when he did that, curls bouncing around his face. Ethan’s fingers twitched with the desire to touch them.

“My email?” Josh was saying, and Ethan shook himself out of the staring contest he was having with chocolate-brown locks. “What are you, forty?”

“My cellphone is not to be used for civilian business,” Ethan recited.

Immediately he knew it had been the wrong thing to say. Josh’s smile wilted faster than Ethan could blink. Still, Josh said, “It’s just my name and my birthday. Joshua Kendrick, zero six two five. At gmail.”

“Understood,” Ethan nodded firmly. “Thank you for telling me.”

All Josh did was stare in response. Ethan shifted his weight from foot to foot, then tried to snap himself back to his military-perfect attention. He was a wreck today, and he couldn’t afford to be. What he’d said to Benedict had been true. During a mission, he wasn’t allowed to be distracted, and yet he couldn’t put this off until afterwards. He was only still in the city due to complications in the first place. He didn’t know how long he had with this stranger.

Joshua Kendrick. Ethan wanted to shape his tongue around the sounds. Instead, he took a step back, and nodded curtly. “I’ll contact you later.”

“Right.” Josh was still watching him when Ethan turned around. He felt the gaze like a tangible touch on the nape of his neck, and shivered as he went around the corner.

Halfway down the block, Ethan paused. He hadn’t heard Josh enter the diner again, or move at all for that matter. He leaned against a wall, doing his best to look nondescript, and listened more carefully.

The diner’s door opened and closed, but Josh’s scent didn’t fade on the wind, so he hadn’t gone inside. Footsteps approached the alleyway where he still stood, and then Ethan heard a heartbeat speed up at the same time he scented a half-remembered chemical astringence. That… waiter. Tyler, their name tag had said.

“The fuck did the dog want with you?” They asked Josh, and Ethan nearly flinched away from the wall.

_ Be a good dog,  _ Ethan remembered. _ You have to obey without thinking. Now, beg. _

_ Shut up, _ Ethan growled at himself.

In the alleyway, there was a shifting of hair on fabric. Josh shaking his head? “I don’t know,” he said, and he sounded honestly bemused. “I guess he was asking me on a date?”

Eavesdropping like this was going to give Ethan emotional whiplash. Tyler laughed, a mocking thing, and said, “Are you shitting me? Guess he got sick of the emissaries the towers are probably throwing at him.”

“Ha, could be.” Josh sounded… angry? At the thought. Why would he be angry?

“You’re not taking him to the diner, are you?”

“Maybe,” Josh hedged. There was an edge of genuine humor to it, now.

“Josh!” Tyler made an indignant sound and there was a  _ whump _ as they presumably hit him. “You don’t want feds hanging around here any more than I do!”

Oh. Wait. Ethan listened more carefully, and he heard - he wasn’t sure what. There was something strange about what Tyler had said, though. It was more than a little suspicious. The way Josh sighed, however, distracted him in an instant.

“He’s going as a date, not on business. Lighten up will you? It’ll only be one date anyway. Guardians don’t go out with baseline people.”

All of what he said was true.  _ Honest, _ even, and Ethan found himself more confused than ever.

His senses had never been wrong before, but  _ could _ Josh be baseline? He didn’t know, and it was maddening. The pair in the alley continued bickering, oblivious to his struggle, and then entered the diner and abruptly became muffled. Keep certified establishments were wonderful to be in, when he needed a break from constant sensory bombardment, but trying to listen in on things happening inside them was a pain in the ass.

So he left. He’d learned… not much, but enough, and he had plenty of other things he needed to do today. Duties that would end much less pleasantly than this one had, but would also abate the guilt growing in his gut at the thought that he was shirking his responsibilities.

Hailing a taxi, Ethan did his best to focus on the task ahead of him. Namely, interrogating Ash Guerra. He wasn’t the one who came up with the questions, of course; that was for informationally-minded people like Cleary. Ethan was simply the one who had to ask the questions and listen very carefully to their answers. He was, after all, very nearly a human lie detector. He wondered if Josh would’ve agreed to go out with him if he knew.

Focus. Now was not the time. There were terrorists, and terrorist sympathizers, to deal with.

“Arrived,” the driver said. Ethan swiped his card on the meter without bothering to look at it; he didn’t have many living expenses, and the Keeps paid him handsomely. Money had never been a concern for him. It looked like it was one for Josh, considering he smelled in part like a bad side of town -

This time Ethan bit his tongue so hard he tasted blood. He couldn’t be distracted.  _ Couldn’t. _

The walk to the interrogation rooms felt a bit like a death march. Going down the stairs to the first basement floor always unsettled Ethan, no matter where he was. Every single Keep used its basement for sensory deprivation, both empathetic and mundane. This resulted in all of them having the same dark grey appearance, and all of them being supremely unpleasant to be in. Very useful, of course, but unpleasant.

There had been times, as a child, when Ethan had thought of these rooms with some degree of relief. Now he walked in, looked through the one-way mirror at Ash sitting handcuffed to a table, and could only hope his nod to Benedict and Cleary wasn’t too stiff.

“What took you so long?” Cleary asked snidely.

Even though he didn’t need to, Ethan checked his watch. He was right on time.

“We dosed her up,” Benedict said, completely ignoring Cleary’s words. Ethan’s hand went from hanging limply to a fist in a second.

“Emisol makes it more difficult to interrogate her,” he said robotically.

“She’s too strong to risk it,” Benedict said. “Sorry, kid.”

“We know you can handle the handicap,” Cleary said. “Here, take this.”

File full of questions safely shoved at Ethan’s chest, Cleary finally stepped away from the door that would lead to Ash’s room. Ethan peeked down at it, just to confirm the first few lines of text, then nodded and stepped forwards. His hand hit the handle, but before he could turn it, Benedict was whispering something from across the room.

“Glad to know it went well.”

One more shaky breath, and Ethan stepped through the doorway. He hoped Cleary hadn’t noticed the words, nor the slight nod Ethan had given in response.

Ash looked up from the table as soon as the door swung open. Her eyes were cloudy, the artificial empathy drug working its magic. Ethan knew the feeling well, and couldn’t help feeling a bit of sympathy for the haze she was currently working through. Still, she had brought it on herself, and so he didn’t hesitate with opening up his own senses to their fullest.

Carefully sitting in the chair meant for him, Ethan set the file down. The sound it made as it hit the table was both very quiet and very final.

“Hello,” Ethan began. “My name is Ethan Rey. I’m a keep employed guardian assigned to your case. You may remember me.”

“I remember,” Ash slurred. “You tackled me. Didn’t your momma teach you not to hit women?

Absolutely no emotion showed on Ethan’s face at her words. He had tied all of his reactions down, wrapped them in a net from which there was no escape, just like his supervising officer had taught him to. “You assaulted three Keep employees. This alone is a felony. Cooperate with us, and you’ll receive a lighter sentence.”

“Cooperate?” It clearly took Ash a bit of effort to sound the word out. They’d probably dosed her a bit too heavily, but she wasn’t showing signs of an  _ over _ dose, so he plowed ahead.

“We know that Aegis contacted you about using your and your wife’s wealth to help fund their organization. We want to know how they discovered your status as unregistered, as well as any information you can give us on their organization.”

Silence, for a moment, and then Ash chuckled humorlessly. “You really think I’ll give them up?”

“You can’t lie to me,” Ethan said. “And we can always bring your wife in for questioning.”

His calm bellied a deep-seated confidence that, even in her drugged state, Ash would pick up on. Ethan wasn’t sure of much at the moment, but he’d never wavered on his place in life. He wasn’t just a dog of the keeps; he was the best hound they had.

Although Ash’s eyes flashed with anger at his words, she didn’t speak. Ethan looked down at his file and decided to try a different question first. One which, thanks to her parents’ deaths, wouldn’t harm anyone she might seek to protect.

“Why weren’t you registered upon coming online?”

Now Ash laughed derisively. “Really? You don’t know? You’re strong too.”

“The keeps provide training and shelter for strong guardians and emissaries, as well as compensation to their parents. I see no reason you shouldn’t have been brought in.”

“I went online at  _ nine,” _ Ash hissed.

It was just about the only thing she could’ve said to make Ethan pause. His eyes flicked to the mirror, then back to the file in front of him. “How close to your birthday?” he asked evenly.

Ash stared at him in disbelief. “Really? You’re not going to doubt me?”

“I can hear your heartbeat,” he reminded her. “How close to your birthday?”

“Two weeks.” Her voice was fainter now.

“So, you came online earlier than your parents expected, and they elected to hide you from the Keeps as a result?”

“Is it really so hard to understand?” Ash leaned forwards, chain  _ clinking _ lightly. “They just wanted to protect me.”

“The Keeps are the safest institution in this country,” Ethan replied by wrote. “We would have protected you just as well.”

“Did the Keeps protect  _ you, _ Ethan Rey?”

Flinching, Ethan glared hard at Ash’s eyes. “Eavesdropping, in your situation? Inadvisable Mrs. Guerra. I could have them increase the dosage at any time.”

Ash didn’t say anything more, but she didn’t look away either. Ethan was the one who put an end to their staring contest,  _ not _ because he was afraid, but because he had more questions to ask. “Are there any backups, online or otherwise, of your correspondence with Aegis?”

Again Ash said nothing. Ethan sighed, then moved to stand up. It wasn’t a bluff; he could easily leave her alone in the cold, miserable room for a few hours before deigning to return. But before he was even halfway out of his seat, she said, “Wait.”

Patiently, Ethan did. He gave her no reaction, and her next breath was shaky. “Information for information. You answer my questions, I’ll… tell you something.”

From the two way mirror came a faint whisper, too quiet for Ash to catch, even without the drugs. Ethan himself had to listen very carefully to understand it. “Agree. I’ll tap twice if she asks something we can’t compromise on.”

Settling back into the seat, Ethan nodded coolly at Ash. She pressed her palms flat to the table, attempting to still the tremor in them, but Ethan’s eyes missed no details.

“How old were you?”

He waited, but when nothing else was forthcoming, said, “When I went online?” She nodded, lips pressed together so tightly they were a bloodless white.There was no knock from the mirror, and why should there be? She would either think he was lying, be intimidated, or both. And so he answered honestly, “I was born online.”

She didn’t slump back in the seat in shock, didn’t shrunk away from him, but he could see both impulses warring in her water-colored eyes. He almost thought he might have to knock her out of the stupor she’d fallen into in order to get his own answer, but then she spoke. “There are forces moving that are older than the Romans.”

Was she answering intimidation with intimidation? Posing a riddle Aegis had first posed to her? Ethan cocked his head. “What might those forces be?”

“My turn,” she said. “Who pulled you from the zone?”

“I did it myself.” Ethan said it with total confidence, because it may very well have been true. He’d done it before.

But then her eyes narrowed, and she said, “No you didn’t. I smelled your emissary.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ethan tried again. He was a bad liar, but he was also rather twisted up about the situation, and if his voice came out a bit harshly, well. The last person he wanted to discuss this with was Ash Guerra.

When she saw that she was getting nothing else out of him, she shook her head. “Aegis never told me particulars on their plans. I never met with any of them in person. But I do know that you, of all people, don’t have anything to fear from them. They aren’t planning on staying in the city long anyway.”

Truth, truth, _ lie,  _ truth. Ethan swallowed hard.

“That will be all, Ethan Rey,” she said tiredly.

“For now, perhaps,” he agreed. She would tell him nothing more for some hours, he saw, and besides that Cleary would want to know what he’d learned. Standing up, he was surprised to find that his knees were a bit wobbly. It didn’t take much to firm his stance, of course, and Ash wouldn’t have been able to see with the angle she was sitting at. Still, when he grabbed the file from the table, he found himself gritting his teeth.

Going back through the door, Ethan sought out Benedict’s face first. The man gave him a small smile of approval, tinged with concern, and Ethan felt his chest constrict.

“So?” Cleary said the moment the door was closed. “Was she lying?”

“Only when she mentioned me being in danger,” Ethan said. “We’ll have to move quickly. A city-wide lockdown is out of the question, but -”

“Yes, yes,” Cleary nodded so fast it looked like his head was flopping on a limp neck. “Anything else?”

Now Ethan hesitated, but Benedict made a little  _ go on _ gesture at him, so he said, “Has there been any news on the Keep’s official strength measurement test? I know they were - considering changing it, and the current scale seems to be causing people like Ash’s parents to panic and make rash choices.”

Cleary waved a hand dismissively, but Benedict was stroking his chin in thought. “I can ask about that,” he said. “I know some of the administrative people involved in creating the literature on the subject, at least.”

“Thank you.” Cleary rolled his eyes at the expression of gratitude, and Ethan had to fight down a flush.

The three of them left the little observation room together, Cleary already staring at his phone, Ethan at the floor, and Benedict at Ethan.

He sincerely hoped the higher-ups who watched the tapes would be able to make more out of what Ash had said than he had. The past two days had been - exhausting, confusing,  _ too much, _ and Ethan just wanted them to stop. But he’d  _ volunteered himself _ for a  _ date _ the next day, and had so much work to do besides.

Privately, he wished his superior was here. Christian always knew how to get Ethan back on track. His mind flashed to Josh, and he felt guilt twist in his belly. He couldn’t go to anyone else with his problem. He  _ couldn’t. _

To make matters worse, he had one more thing he had to do before he went on his “date.” There was a computer upstairs, in the set of rooms the local Keep had generously offered for their use, which would tell him with a simple push of a button if Josh had ever been audited under suspicion of being an unregistered emissary. It would also tell him whether Josh had committed any more mundane crimes. After all, knowledge was power.

**Author's Note:**

> Links:  
> [Main tumblr](http://twitchtipthegnawer.tumblr.com/)  
> [Nsfw/gore blog](http://twitchingcorpse.tumblr.com/)  
> [Twitter](https://twitter.com/twitchingcorpse?lang=en)  
> Every comment will get a reply, always <3 I value every single reader and want them to know that I listen to their input!


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